Fan Mount for Raspberry Pi 4 with Heat Sink Case

thingiverse

A snap-on fan case for use with a passive heat sink case (https://www.adafruit.com/product/4341) is available. The fan version of that case uses small fans that don't really push any air, but this clip-on holds a Noctua 40x40x10mm 5V fan to keep things cool. A duct routes the wires to the Pi GPIO pins for connection up. I only use +5 and Gnd, but anyone wanting PWM control or RPM monitoring should consider the GPIO voltage limits. This clip-on clamps pretty tight and only makes things a little bigger. It covers the POE and camera port, and might add a base to keep the bottom plate off the table for better working conditions. I got my fan hooked up and with zipping up a big tarfile with other loads running to get the load to ~2.5 as reported by top, temperatures never got above 30C. Just normal loads and I get 24-26C in a 68F ambient room. I used Fujipoly Ultra Extreme thermal pad with a 17.0 W/mK rating on the heat sink and the whole assembly only got mildly warm running a desktop but I wasn't really trying to heat it up. I think that fan with the heat sink and the Fujipoly can probably take whatever anyone wants to throw at it without getting hot or throttling.